Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Archive for May, 2005

Report from London

Ted (who reports that he’s having trouble posting directly while away) writes as follows:

I’m less than twelve hours into my first trip to London, and one can see right up front how badly the compensation culture has stunted the US compared to the UK. My ride from the airport was in a Mini Mayfair, which is even smaller than the small Mini Cooper, but one can also drive around the city in something called a “Smart Car,” an even teenier two-seater akin to the one Sam Lowry drove in Brazil. Any manufacturer trying to sell a car like that in the US would risk getting socked with punitive damages the first time the car ended up a loser in a collision with an SUV; after all, the disingenuous plaintiff’s attorney would say, the manufacturer was clearly more concerned with profits than with safety by daring to sell a small car. (Never mind the environmental differences, or the fact that the availability of a cheap SmartCar could vastly improve the lives of many working poor.)

The escalators in the Underground move about 60% faster than the ones in the DC Metro. I’m looking forward to studying whether London has a worse safety record with its escalators. I would hypothesize that, aside from the King’s Cross fire, they do not: people are just more careful, because (1) the escalators are plainly dangerous, rather than giving the illusion of safety that a slow escalator does; and (2) Brits know that if they hurt themselves, they can’t blame someone else, much less potentially collect millions (Feb. 13). It’s just so nice to be treated like an adult.

I wouldn’t trade the American way for the British way, but we could learn a thing or two.

Filed under: , , ,

Wendy’s case: the digital evidence

San Jose police say the finger that Anna Ayala says she found in a bowl of Wendy’s chili (Apr. 27, Apr. 22, etc.) has now been identified; it belonged to a co-worker of her husband, James Plascencia, who lost it in the tailgate of a truck in an on-the-job accident. Authorities believe it then fell into the possession of Mr. Plascencia. (Dan Reed, Linda Goldston and Chuck Carroll, “The jig is up”, San Jose Mercury News, May 14; “Worker: Finger found in chili severed in tailgate”, AP/CNN, May 15).

Filed under: ,

Claim: beer label a hate crime

The Lost Coast Brewery in Humboldt, Calif. says it will take off the shelves its Indica India Pale Ale, whose label currently depicts the Indian elephant-god Ganesh “holding a beer in one of his four hands, and another in his trunk”. Although brewery co-owner Barbara Groom said her Hindu friends don’t mind the label, a California man named Brij Dhir sued the brewery, along with other defendants such as the Safeway supermarket chain, claiming that it is offensive and intimidates Hindus from practicing their religion. “Dhir seeks at least $25,000 and his lawsuit mentions that $1 billion would be appropriate to compensate Hindus around the world.” “It’s a hate crime”, Dhir told the Contra Costa Times. (“Brewery pulls label showing Hindu god”, RealBeer.com, May 9). (& welcome visitors from Blog Mela, the periodic tour of India-related blogs, hosted this time by Shanti Mangala, and from Sepia Mutiny). And: reader Rich B. from Baltimore is reminded of the recent post (Mar. 17) on the theme of how we’re lucky we don’t have blasphemy laws the way Europe does, and asks: why make a law when you can just sue about it?

Filed under: , , ,

“An army of busybodies”

“History may record that what offended them [American voters in 1994, when Congress changed hands] wasn’t liberalism but busybodyism — the endless, frenetic search by elected officials for ever-new ways to make the country more fabulous. Bush and his Republicans are close to proving that busybodyism can become a creature of the right as well as the left.” (Andrew Ferguson, “Operation Overreach”, Weekly Standard, May 16)(via Sullivan).

Laminated glass in car windows

Belatedly following up on the Mar. 7 report about the $31 million verdict against Ford Motor in Zavala County, Tex., on attorney Mikal Watts’s theory (as we put it then) “that the [ejection] injuries were Ford’s fault because it should have used laminated instead of conventional glass in the side windows as a sort of substitute restraint system,” law student Shane Murphy (George Mason U.) had the following comment:

Laminated glass, which is two layers of plate glass with plastic laminate in between, is used on automotive windshields. It has been used for decades to keep objects from easily getting through the windshield and entering the vehicle, not the other way around. In fact, I have seen more than one hapless unbelted occupant of a vehicle propelled fully through a laminated windshield.

Safety glass, which is designed to shatter into very small pieces, is used on side windows in cars. This type of glass is easy to shatter should you need to make a hasty exit from the vehicle, and that’s a key reason it’s put there. It also shatters into small pieces with very little “sharding,” reducing the opportunity for serious injury from broken glass.

Laminated glass requires a special saw to get through. With 12 years of experience, it still takes me five minutes to saw through a car windshield. If your car is on fire you’d prefer safety glass for this reason alone. Laminated glass also causes serious head and facial injuries to those who do full face-plants against the windshield despite seat belt warnings. It will have the same effect in a side window if an occupant is unbelted.

Some automakers are putting laminated glass in the side windows of high-end cars, but this trend should be viewed with great caution. This type of glass does prevent people from “popping a window” to escape from a vehicle in an emergency situation. Two examples of emergencies of this type are vehicle crashes with resulting fires and accidents where a vehicle ends up partially submerged in a body of water. In both cases, the electrical system will likely short out and will prevent easy exit since nearly all cars now have power windows.

I really cannot believe this theory about auto glass even got past the laugh test, never mind into the jury room. Automotive glass should not be used to keep people in the vehicle. Using automotive glass as a backup safety feature would do more harm than good. Seat belts are to keep you in the vehicle, not windows. In fact, I much prefer glass that breaks easily.

More: reader Brian Poldrack of Houston, Texas writes in to say:

Read On…

Filed under: , , , ,

2004’s most bizarre employment suits

Attorney Gerald Skoning of Seyfarth Shaw in Chicago does one of these roundups every year (see Apr. 1, 2003 and Apr. 13-15, 2001). Among his winners in this year’s compilation: the case in which the Seventh Circuit ruled punitive damages excessive following a supervisor’s history of remarks like “You’re being a blonde again today”; the Nova Scotia case in which a court of appeal found that a worker of Mi’kmaq tribal origins was not discriminated against by her boss’s having called her Kemosabe, “the oft-used word from the 1950s show The Lone Ranger”; and a case in which a manufacturing worker who’d engaged in flirtatious banter was reinstated after his dismissal, the arbitrator noting that so far as atmosphere goes “the shop floor is entirely unlike high tea at the Savoy”. (“The 10 Most Bizarre Employment Cases of 2004”, National Law Journal, Apr. 20).

Filed under:

Guestblogging opportunities

With the warmer weather (and some real-world writing projects that will be demanding my attention) it’s time for me again to remind readers that there’s fun to be had in volunteering for a guestblogging stint here (or at Point of Law, which also could use guestbloggers). Blogging experience is preferred but not necessary, and the technology is easy to learn. Drop me a line at editor – at – thisdomainname.com.

Filed under:

Legal hazards of rating air safety

From a Forbes article on safety problems in charter aviation:

Businesses pay [Joseph Moeggenberg’s] company, Aviation Research Group/U.S., or “Argus” in the trade, as much as $20,000 per month for full access to ratings reports on 848 charters, or $249 for a single report. Argus provides specifics about a flight, the jet’s history, the owner, whether the plane is double-booked from another charter, the pilot’s record and so on. It assigns a red, yellow or green light on safety (36% receive reds or yellows).

One charter outfit got a prescient “Does Not Qualify” rating from Argus: Aviation Charter of Eden Prairie, Minn., which flew U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota in a Beechcraft King Air A100 as he campaigned for reelection in October 2002. When a newspaper later reported that Aviation Charter got a bad rating, the company sued Argus for defamation but lost the case on summary judgment; the case is pending on appeal. The flight crashed at the Eveleth, Minn. airport in October 2002, killing all eight people aboard, including the senator, his wife and their adult daughter. Says Argus attorney Eric Heiberg of Minneapolis: “I can’t imagine we’re going to lose.”

(Seth Lubove, “Flight of Fear”, Forbes, May 9). An online summary of the case (Aug. 2004, courtesy Cousineau McGuire & Anderson; scroll to “Federal Courts — Defamation”) indicates that the court agreed that the rating contained inaccuracies which harmed Aviation Charter’s reputation, but found no proof that Argus had acted with malice or reckless disregard for the truth. Update Mar. 15, 2006: Eighth Circuit (in summer 2005) dismissed suit, ruling ratings subjective.

Filed under: , ,

Elsewhere in the blogosphere

Evan Schaeffer is a plaintiffs’ lawyer, but he’s made it to the Overlawyered blogroll with an entertaining weblog about balancing a real life with a law firm career; law students’ contributions to blogs; law and literature; and clever, if fallacious, anti-litigation-reform posts and attacks on this site’s positions. Now on the site is an e-mail interview with me about my new job. And don’t miss the discussion in the comments about whether consumers are smart enough to make their own economic decisions in response to my answer to Evan’s last question. More: Blawg Review #6 takes note.

Filed under: